Meet the Speakers

Fr. James Brent, O.P.

Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. was born and raised in Michigan. He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in Philosophy, and completed his doctorate in Philosophy at Saint Louis University on the epistemic status of Christian beliefs according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology, in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will”, and on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. He earned his STL from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. He taught in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America from 2010-2014, and spent the year of 2014-2015 doing full time itinerant preaching on college campuses across the United States. Since then he has been an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies.

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau is the prior of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, where he also teaches moral theology. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), defending a dissertation on St. Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of the common good. Fr. Guilbeau has also worked for various Catholic media, including Aleteia.org and EWTN Radio.

Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.

Fr. Dominic Legge is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and an assistant professor in systematic theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhL from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001 and was ordained a priest in 2007. He practiced law for several years as a trial attorney for the US Department of Justice before becoming a Dominican. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P.

Entering the Order of Preachers in 2004, Fr. Petri was ordained a priest in 2009. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America. Prior to his appointment as Vice President and Academic Dean of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in 2013, Fr. Petri was an Assistant Professor of Theology at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is a member of the Society of Christian Ethics and is the secretary/treasurer of the Academy of Catholic Theology. He has published articles in Nova et Vetera and in The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. He is also a contributor to Catholic News Agency and The National Catholic Register.  His book, Aquinas and the Theology of the Body: The Thomistic Foundations of John Paul II’s Anthropology, was published by CUA Press in 2016.

Fr. Dominic Langevin, O.P.

Fr. Langevin entered the Order of Friars Preachers in 1998 and was ordained a priest in 2005. He was formerly assigned as a parochial vicar at St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Charlottesville, Virginia, serving the University of Virginia. While working on his doctorate at the University of Fribourg, Fr. Langevin was employed full-time there as the assistant to the Chair of Dogmatic Theology for Ecclesiology and the Sacraments. Fr. Langevin joined the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in the fall of 2013. He teaches courses principally in sacramental theology and liturgiology. From 2018 to 2021, he was the editor of the journal The Thomist, for which he previously was book review editor. His book, From Passion to Paschal Mystery (Academic Press Fribourg, 2015), analyzes 20th-century Church teaching on the relationship between the sacraments (focusing on baptism and the Eucharist) and the events of Christ’s life. His primary research interest is general sacramental theology.

He was appointed the Vice President and Dean of the Pontifical Faculty in May 2021.

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. serves presently as Assistant Director of Campus Outreach for the Thomistic Institute. He served previously as an associate pastor at St. Louis Bertrand Church in Louisville, KY where he also taught as an adjunct professor at Bellarmine University. Born and raised near Philadelphia, PA, he attended the Franciscan University of Steubenville, studying mathematics and humanities. Upon graduating, he entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He was ordained a priest in 2016 and holds an STL from the Dominican House of Studies. He has published articles in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and Angelicum. He is also a regular contributor to the podcasts Pints with Aquinas and Godsplaining.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is the director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum in Rome. Originally a native of southeastern Georgia, Fr. White studied at Brown University, where he converted to Catholicism. He did his doctoral studies at Oxford University and is the author of The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Thomistic Study in Natural Theology, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, and Exodus. He is co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera and, in 2011, was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.

Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P. is an American Dominican, physicist, and philosopher. Before joining the Dominican order he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology before going on to earn his doctorate in physics from Stanford University studying theoretical particle physics. After joining the Dominicans in 2010, he studied philosophy and theology in preparation for his ordination to the priesthood in 2017. In addition, he earned a Licentiate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, focusing on the philosophy of science and natural philosophy. For the past two years he has been an Assistant Professor of Physics at Providence College in Providence, RI, where he has been teaching physics and restarting a research program in particle physics.

Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P.

Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., is a priest of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph, and he is currently completing a doctorate in Sacred Theology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Fr. Cuddy serves as the general editor of the “Thomist Tradition Series” and the “Monastic Mind Series,” and he is co-author of Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Fortress Press, 2017). He has written for numerous publications on the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist Tradition.

Fr. Jordan Schmidt, O.P.

Fr. Jordan Schmidt was born in Fargo, ND, and attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN for his undergraduate studies.  After entering the Order of Preachers, he came to Washington DC to study theology, graduating from the PFIC in 2009 with an STB/MDiv in theology, and from CUA in 2012 with an STL in biblical theology.  Upon his ordination to the priesthood, he was appointed associate pastor of St Mary’s parish in New Haven, CT where he served until 2013.  Fr. Jordan next returned to the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC to pursue doctoral studies at CUA. Since earning his PhD in biblical studies in 2018, he has been teaching various courses in Sacred Scripture at the PFIC.

Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P.

Fr. Ambrose offers counsel and advice to the director and assists in the supervision of TI staff and projects. He is originally from Connecticut and entered the Dominican Order in 2007 and was ordained a priest in 2013. Before entering the Dominican Order, he graduated from The Catholic University of America with a BA in philosophy. After ordination he completed a Licentiate in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America and then taught for two years at Providence College. In the academic year of 2013-2014 he was a visiting scholar at Boston College and in the fall of 2014 he started a Ph.D. program in philosophy at the University of Virginia. After completing his Ph.D. in the summer of 2021, he was appointed a Lecturer in Philosophy at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. While working on his dissertation under COVID lockdown, Fr. Ambrose began painting in watercolor and writing icons in egg tempura.

Prof. Karin Öberg

Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship.

Prof. Jonathan Lunine

Jonathan I. Lunine is Vice-President of the Society of Catholic Scientists and David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences of Cornell University and Director of the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. (Ph.D. Planetary Science 1985, Caltech) Prof. Lunine does research in astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and among other awards is the recipient of the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2015) and the Basic Sciences Award of the Int. Academy of Astronautics (2009). He is the author of Astrobiology, A Multidisciplinary Approach (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2005) and Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World (2nded., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).